


X-Com: Beneath Malevolent Skies

by Thalgrond



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon-Typical Death Rate, Canon-Typical Violence, Desperation Romance, Ethereals Actually Have a Plan, Ethereals are Smart, Eventual Romance, Exhaustion, Gen, Hard-won battles, Hospital Scenes, I'm a jerk to my characters, Injury, Injury Recovery, Mostly Gen, Multi, Only Loosely Based on the Games, Seriously Loads of People Die, Stress, mostly OCs, pyrrhic victories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 00:52:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17012427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thalgrond/pseuds/Thalgrond
Summary: Probes rain from the sky and unseen beings stalk the streets. A fleet of hostile spacecraft orbit the sun, and there seems no way of stopping the alien menace, only of delaying the inevitable. Funding X-Com is the world's final gambit, but few truly expect it to succeed. (Loosely based on the Long War mod.)





	X-Com: Beneath Malevolent Skies

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posting this from my FF account, as I know there are some people who don't frequent both. Note: if you're here for purely for romance, you are likely to be left cold by this story. It has very little of that, at least not right now. Some of the characters vibe well together, but they're kinda busy what with the whole apocalypse thing going on. While there are romances planned for later in the story, they will always remain distinctly in a subplot role. Also, to be honest, I'm not great at writing romantic relationships.

_There was no warning before they came. One day, humanity were just living their normal lives. We had our own problems, sure, but for the most part, we were all secure in the knowledge that we were safe. We were masters of our own destiny, just as we ever had been. But then came Landfall..._

\-----

Vahlen stepped outside into the night air and closed the sliding glass door behind her. From inside the apartment, she could still hear the pounding music, but it was muted and distant now. She sighed in relief, and walked across the balcony to the railing, leaning against it and looking out at the distant skyline of Berlin, just visible over the rooftops of the nearby buildings. She placed her empty glass carefully on the railing and then rubbed at her temples, grimacing. The bride certainly did like her EDM, and the bachelorette party's organizers had gone all out with catering to that preference.

Behind her, the door slid open again, blasting her with another dose of heavy bass and synth riffs, then just as quickly slid shut again. A moment later, a second woman joined her at the railing. Vahlen glanced over at her, quickly taking in the woman's youthful features, dark complexion, curly hair and light green dress. Then she turned toward the horizon again. There were a few moments of silence, then the other woman said, in halting and heavily-accented German, "Hey, you're Hanna's... um... scientist friend, are you? Umm... Mira?"

"Moira," she corrected. "Moira Vahlen."

"Moira? Okay. Well, I'm Lily," responded the younger woman, and extended her hand. Vahlen shook it firmly, and.

"Are you English?" Moira asked.

"Ah. Um, accent gave me away, did it? Yes, um, Hanna met me at art school."

"Ah. I see. Well," she said, transitioning smoothly to English, less heavily accented and more fluent than Lily's German had been. "I can speak English if it makes you more comfortable."

"Oh. That's nice. Thanks," Lily responded, also in English.

They lapsed into silence for a moment longer, then Lily pointed out "Your glass is empty."

"Yes, I was just thinking I might go remedy that. Maybe once this song is over."

"Heh. I hear you there. Hanna's great, but, y'know, it's her party, so they tailored the music to her music tastes, and... well..."

"Yes. But I think we can give her this one, right? I would toast the bride, but..." she raised her empty glass with a wry smile, then turned around and leaned against the banister with a sigh. "This isn't usually my sort of evening anyhow. I actually only have this one dress." She indicated the red gown she was wearing.

"Oh? What would you usually be, um..."

"If I weren't here, I would be at my lab downtown. Full getup. White lab coat and everything. Don't get me wrong, I love Hanna, I wish her luck and I'm happy to be here, but... like I said, this isn't what I'm used to."

"What do you do at the lab?"

"Applied biochemistry."

"Meaning...?"

Vahlen braced herself. She never knew quite how people would react when she told them what she did, but she had established some expectations. Usually confusion, followed by laughter when she explained. "Astrobiology."

Lily seemed taken aback for a moment, then simply said "Huh. So, like, alien autopsies and stuff?"

"Well, no. Obviously, I have no real specimens to study. What I do there is primarily theoretical, with some occasional biochemical experiments. Currently, I have the team focusing primarily on polar molecular research... erm... that is... trying to figure out if life is possible in a sea of saline ammonia rather than water. We've been trying to make lipid bilayers form in ammonia-methane cryo-solutions and hyper-saline suspensions like those found on certain parts of the moon Titan. It's difficult, not because of the lipid bilayer- that's easy enough to catalyse- but due simply to the fact that most of the lipids we use in biochem on Earth freeze solid when exposed to the temperatures we're working with, or denature on contact with the chemical solution." Vahlen was ready at this point to launch into a full-blown lecture. However, she caught herself just in time. In her experience, not everyone was as excited about xeno-bacterial genesis as she was. "But, ah, telling you any more than that will require at least half an hour, and I suspect you'll be wanting to go back to the bachelorette party. Tell me when the presents come out, will you? I want to see Hanna's reaction to mine."

Vahlen smiled at the younger woman and turned back toward the skyline. Lily stood quietly beside her for a moment, then reached out and snatched Vahlen's glass from its resting place on the railing and examined the red wine residue left at the bottom. "Tell you what, Moira Vahlen," she said, smiling, "I'll go refill this, and then you can explain to me what some of those words you just used mean." Then, without waiting for a response, she strode back to the glass door and walked inside, letting out another blast of the loud music from inside.

Vahlen was confused but pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. Perhaps she would enjoy the evening after all.

She was so lost in thought, trying to organize concepts in her mind into something that would be intelligible to a beginner like Lily, that she nearly missed the flash of orange that emanated from the city center. She spotted it out of the corner of her eye, and her head turned reflexively to look at the source of the flash. It was gone now, though, and she was just starting to think it might have been her imagination when she spotted the second brilliant orange speck streak across the sky and disappear behind one of the tall buildings downtown.

She stared at the skyline, no longer just for something to look at, but with powerful intensity. When she saw the third orange speck moments later, she knew she wasn't just seeing things. There was something going on.

She ran inside, leaving the door open in her haste, through the pounding music and to the place by the door where she had left her bag. She pulled her phone out of the outermost pocket, ran back across the apartment, dodging dancers as she went, then out the door and onto the balcony again. Then she started up the phone and opened google. "Berlin news" she typed into the search bar, then hit search. While that was loading, she switched to a new tab and typed in "meteor activity recent?" then search again. A fourth orange streak flew across the sky and vanished behind one of the downtown buildings. They were all coming down in the same area, she realized. Not just all within the city limits, but all of them looked like they were coming down within a two-block radius. She frowned. No meteor shower was that consistent. She switched back to the "Berlin news" tab. The first few results were to do with sports, followed by one about a worker's union strike from two months before. She refreshed the tab. And refreshed again. And again. Frustrated, she put the phone down on the railing and glared at it.

"Hey, so what was it you were saying about 'lipid bilayers'? I mean that sounds like as good a place to start as... um..." Lily had come back onto the balcony, now carrying a glass of cheap red wine in each hand. "Hey, did you have a fight with your phone since I left?"

Vahlen turned toward the younger woman with an intensity that made Lily take a couple steps back. "Look," Vahlen said, pointing toward the skyline. "Just watch! Tell me you see it too!" Lily seemed confused, but she didn't argue. She turned out toward the skyline in the distance and watched it quietly. Vahlen, meanwhile, picked the phone back up and went back to furiously hammering the 'refresh' button.

Thirty seconds later, no new orange lights had fallen. Lily's voice made it clear that she was suddenly doubting Vahlen's sanity. "So, um, what am I supposed to be looking f- oh, holy crap!" Vahlen looked up just in time to see the latest light vanish behind the skyline. "What is that?" Lily asked.

"I'm not quite sure," Vahlen replied. "But the public is finally reacting to it, whatever it is. Come take a look at this." Lily placed the two forgotten glasses on the railing and crossed the balcony to look at the phone in Vahlen's hand.

On the screen was a picture of a strange, black-and-green block of what appeared to be metal, sitting in the middle of a small crater of cracked asphalt. The green markings were arranged in concentric circles on what appeared to be the top of the object, and the lumps and markings on the sides of it were far too symmetrical to be a natural formation. Underneath it was a caption in German which read Fell out of the sky and crashed into the street in Central Berlin. Can anyone tell me what it is? "What is it, some kind of meteor?" Lily asked. Vahlen was silent. She was scrolling through related posts, searching for more about the objects. One had apparently crushed a car. All of them were hitting the street, with none impacting on rooftops. What was more, each of them was almost exactly one block away from the closest other alien objects in any direction, forming a grid, with one landing at each street corner.

"Moira? Do you know what this is?" Lily seemed to be getting more and more anxious the more she read. Vahlen said nothing and instead refreshed the page one last time. This time around the related posts showed green mist spraying from the strange objects. There were human shapes in that cloud, clearly being coated in the substance. One even seemed to be trying to escape and was being dragged back toward the center of the cloud where the object was still just barely visible.

"God..." Lily muttered, looking over Vahlen's shoulder. "Oh god oh god..." Vahlen set her jaw and breathed deep. Then, with a level of calm she wouldn't have expected of herself, she closed the browser and opened the phone app. She had hoped never to use this number, but she supposed that now she had no choice.


End file.
